@spocko The irony is that St. Nicholas spent his life trying to stamp out heathen traditions and ended up becoming the poster child of the ultimate pagan holiday mashup of Yuletide and Saturnalia.
PS: Most of our Christmas traditions have a pagan origin. Christmas wreaths were put up to scare away evil spirits (different kinds of plants and woods each had their own symbolism) and during Saturnalia people decorated the trees outside (now we just decorate one tree inside).
@GlowingLantern@spocko That might have been the original purpose of the tree. But it was Prince Albert who imported the tree to the English-speaking world from Germany. By then it had been a Christian--specifically Lutheran--tradition only since the 1530s. It may have come to them by way of the Tree of Paradise in medieval mystery plays(Germany had no Saturnalia). So its "pagan origins"--mainly hypothetical--were quite removed by the time Christians adopted it.
@jlroberson@spocko Western Germany was part of the Roman Empire, but I digress. There are other examples too, like hanging up mistletoe and it being a symbol of love and forgiveness. Some traditions stayed relatively unchanged, while others were Christianised (a recent example is the Lutheran “Christkind”, which replaced Santa Clause in some areas). Similarly, St. Nicholas replaced the pagan traditions before him, mixed with the traditions of his own worship.
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